


Meta: Merope's Legacy

by deslea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Imperius, Meta, love potions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:27:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deslea/pseuds/deslea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merope's use of the Imperius left a legacy that would last for generations. Written for the Imperius fest on hp_darkarts on LiveJournal, October 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meta: Merope's Legacy

I'll start my thoughts on Merope and her use of coercion on Tom Riddle by giving a thumbnail of how I see the sequence of events. I'm working on the assumption that Merope used the Imperius and not a love potion, contrary to Dumbledore's view. I'll explain why as I go, but it doesn't really affect the outcome too much either way.

Firstly, Merope compelled Tom to love her, and to leave Little Hangleton and elope with her immediately. If she had not, they would have been stopped by his family. They _may_ have been able to achieve a move by stealth on a longer timetable if he was under Imperius, but certainly there is no way she could have risked him behaving like, say, Ron in HBP in front of his family if she had used a love potion. They would have probably physically restrained him and called upon medical or psychiatric help. 

In the end I side with the Imperius. I think Merope was more of a survivor than the fandom gives her credit for, but I don't think she perceived herself as so much an agent of change in her own life as to premeditate in that way (or even to think she would have an opportunity - Tom would not have come right up to the house, to provide a natural opportunity to offer him a drink). I am more inclined to think that he came by one day while she was outside, and she used the _Imperio_ on impulse, under the dual motives of her infatuation with him and the knowledge that her father was due to return from Azkaban.

I also think that the elopment was itself coerced, separately from loving/being infatuated with her. Tom came from an aristocratic Muggle family and he would probably have viewed marriage quite separately from love. He would not have viewed elopement as a foregone conclusion from loving a socially unsuitable woman - his natural endpoint from that starting point would have been to marry Cecilia and install Merope as his mistress (something Merope could not do, with her father's return home in the mix).

So they ran off to London and married. It isn't clear to me, unless I've missed a chronology somewhere, how long they were married before Merope became pregnant. However, I think we can extrapolate that it wasn't long. If it had been 2-3 years, Tom would probably have gotten a reasonable job, established a home, and in the process, brought Merope further along in the development of her physical health and financial means than her fate suggests. He would probably also have taught her to maximise her looks and her confidence, even if (due to the spell or potion) he didn't care about them himself, because it would be important to his role of provider for her to fit the role of a career gentleman's wife. Had she maintained the deception for several years, it is likely she would have survived his abandonment because the exercise would have given her the tools to do so.

It isn't clear how far along Merope was in the pregnancy before the coercion fall away. It seems to me that there are a few possibilities. 

Firstly, perhaps she ended the deception before she knew she was pregnant, thinking that the setting for him to genuinely love her was already established. They were away from his family, perhaps living a basic existence using whatever money and portable valuables Tom had brought with them. They might have lived in cheap little rooms in a boarding house. She would probably have bought makeup and pretty, cheap, colourful dresses that she would have thought transformed her and made her pretty. To her, their life would have seemed very pleasant, and she might have believed it would also be pleasing to him (and she may have been quite shocked to discover that he perceived himself as living in a slum with a girl who was beneath him). 

Secondly, she may have ended the deception during the pregnancy. There are a few variations on this, but they all boil down to the question of what would make Merope feel safe enough to do so. I see Merope as a reasonably competent survivor - not on the level of valiant heroine, more a real-world survivor who endures but at a considerable cost. She had survived an abusive home, survived on her own while Marvolo and Morfin were in prison, and then seized her opportunity to make her escape before her father's release. So I don't think she would have acted recklessly.

One variation is that she may have felt that the pregnancy itself made her safe from Tom's disillusion (in which case she would probably have waited until the pregnancy was far enough advanced to be fairly sure it would go full term - at least the second trimester, and in this era, possibly even the third). Another is that she may have acted early, deciding that if she had miscalculated, she had the option of terminating the pregnancy (but then found that she couldn't bring herself to do so, and/or the methods available were too dangerous - she had limited access to ingredients, and safe Muggle options were expensive and difficult to access. If, as Dumbledore posited, she couldn't or wouldn't use magic, help from Diagon Alley would have also been inaccessible). 

It is also likely that Merope, the survivor who was now pregnant, fully intended to reinstate the Imperius or love potion if there was any sign that Tom would not love her freely. If so, perhaps the shock of Tom's rejection robbed her of her abilities. This also supports the Imperius theory - if she were using potions, she could have used weaker versions of the drug over time to guage his reaction, and kept a strong version in reserve, and this would not be affected by her grief. If Merope did willingly end the deception at all, I find it virtually impossible to believe that she didn't have this contingency plan up her sleeve.

However, I don't believe this is what occurred. I think it most likely that Tom, like Barty Crouch Jr and other long-term Imperius victims, began to withstand the curse and fight back. I think that Tom rose to consciousness and fully understood that his wife was a witch keeping him under her control. It's all very romantic to think Merope lost her powers from heartbreak, but I think it was probably much more prosaic: I think Tom waited until her pregnancy was advanced enough to impede her movement, and broke her wand. There is no suggestion that her wand was on her person when she died, and it probably would have been treated as an interesting curio and kept for baby Tom if it had. (Every wand we have seen has been stylised and carefully carved, and not easily mistaken for a stick). 

Merope was now without her source of magic, possibly unable to get into Diagon Alley, and unable to afford a new wand. Any options for securing her future would have relied on magic (for instance, coercing someone to give her a job, coercing her landlord to let her stay, Tranfiguring random objects into Muggle money). She rapidly ran through the little money and valuables she had. Possibly, her landlord took pity on her and said she could stay until the birth (perhaps suggesting that she could give the child up and then work for a living). This is quite possibly how she ended up at the orphanage. Also, in 1923, Wool's Orphanage may well have been a workhouse; if so, she might have intended to admit them both permanently. Workhouses were not legally abolished until 1930, and they continued to exist in varying forms for many years after.

Before the birth, however, it is also possible that Merope returned to the only home she had, her father's. If so, she either found him dead, or quarrelled with him resulting in his death (for instance, from a heart attack - I consider Dumbledore's theory that he let himself starve to death in the absence of a daughter-servant ludicrous in the extreme). If she did return, she fled after his death and never came back. Countering this theory, though, is that she probably would have had the sense to leave with her father's wand, if he still had one after his stay in Azkaban.

Now we come to Merope's death. It is too simplistic, I think, to say that she died due to her broken heart arising from Tom's abandonment, and rather stupid to suggest she could have raised her wand to save herself. Witches and wizards die all the time. Child-Tom believing this makes sense, whereas Dumbledore believing it is nonsensical. (I'm inclined to wonder whether Dumbledore was attempting to break down Harry's resistance to Voldemort with this rather silly romanticised tale so Harry could access Voldemort's thoughts while seeking the Deathly Hallows). I think the whole thing was cataclysmic - losing her marriage, losing her magic and/or wand, possibly (if she was aware of it) the death of her father, her probable intention to surrender her child, and the prospect of working in the Muggle world for the rest of her life to keep body and soul together. Combine the shock-trauma of all of these with the December cold, no money for heating, possibly nowhere to sleep, and the inherent danger of childbirth in this era, and her death becomes far more realistic. 

Merope's final act, in naming the child for Tom and Marvolo, can be read a couple of ways. It could be seen as a final gesture of defeat, of love for two men who didn't really love her. It could have been a nod to both her magical and adopted-Muggle lives. It could also have been intended to make the baby findable if her husband ever came looking for them later. I lean towards the latter. I consider it a final act of survival for her child.

**Impact on Tom Riddle**

The rise from Imperius theory explains Tom's abrupt disappearance without seeking a divorce, and without any enquiry about their child, then or later. He would have been, in his view, running from someone potentially very dangerous, which would outweigh any other concern. (It's much harder to evade the Imperius than a love potion - all you need to do to avoid the latter is not eat or drink suspicious things).

While it is clear that Tom was not a nice man (eg, his laughter at Bob Ogden's misfortune), Tom was seemingly an only child of an upper-crust family. In the normal scheme of things he would not have abandoned Merope the way he did. He would have sought a divorce (and possibly a judgment of parental unfitness on Merope), in order to remarry and maintain the family line. 

However, he did not take any steps to do any of these things. He ran home to his parents and appears to have lived a quiet life close to them. He probably rarely ventured out, fearful of falling foul of Morfin Gaunt, who would have blamed him for Merope running away, and/or fearful that Merope and the child would return to Little Hangleton. He would also fear for any future retribution by Morfin or Merope and be reluctant to inflict this on a wife and subsequent children. It would have been a shadow that hung over the rest of his life.

I think it also likely that Tom did eventually confide, at least to some degree, in his parents (although he probably painted Merope as a madwoman who dabbled frighteningly in the occult, rather than a witch per se). They do not seem to have pressed him to find the child, or pursue a divorce, or remarry. They appear to have accepted his radically changed lifestyle and the end of the Riddle line. The Gaunts were known, with generations of tales circulating in the village, and occult and witchcraft was still something spoken of seriously in Muggle religious parlance in this era. The abandonment of the only Riddle grandchild would be acceptable to the family in this scenario, especially when considering that there was a known pattern of madness in the Gaunt line and the baby might be reasonably thought to be mad as well. 

In addition, it was not possible at that time under UK law to divorce an insane spouse (nor was it considered a socially acceptable thing to abandon one - it was seen as quite shameful). Tom could have eventually had Merope declared legally dead, but he might not have believed it enough to risk it, and this would also have invited Morfin into their lives, since he would be questioned by authorities about whether she had made any contact. This also would account for his parents accepting his failure to continue the family line.

**Impact on Merope**

I think it's possible to over-think the impact on Merope. Merope had never experienced true love from another and probably never perceived the watered-down nature of the illusion. Also, it's possibly a bit overly-sentimental to think it _was_ watered-down. None of us actually knows what it's like for someone to treat us with such utter adoration that we _always_ come first, are _always_ admired and appreciated. Sure, it's false, but maybe the lived reality of it is absolutely fantastic, and that outweighs the messiness of "real" love. There seem to be plenty of tycoons with sycophantic young wives who think so. So who knows?

Really, I don't think Merope had enough experience of her own human freedoms to understand why they mattered - particularly in an era that didn't really prize them much anyway. The 1920s was an era of workhouses (situational slavery for the poor), enforced slavery in many British colonies, elf-slavery in the magical world, and so on. She also appears not to have gone to school, so she would never have been exposed to the Wizarding world's belief that the Imperius was unforgivable. I doubt she understood she had done anything terribly wrong at all.

**Impact on baby Tom**

Regular readers of mine will not be at all surprised by what I have to say on this one, because I refer to it quite often in my notes in stories about Voldemort. With the greatest respect and love for the rest of the world she built for us, J. K. Rowling's pseudo-canon suggestions that Tom Riddle was magically prevented from feeling love due to the circumstances of his conception are ignorant, offensive rubbish. They're the magical equivalent of the suggestion that a woman's body can differentiate between sperm from willing sex and sperm from rape, and prevent conception from the latter (thank you, US politics). It's also unbelievably offensive and unfair to the many loving and loved people conceived under rape, impaired consent, seduction achieved through lies and manipulation, prostitution, and any number of other compromised and unfavourable circumstances. 

So what effect _did_ it have?

In my opinion, other than the practical knock-on effects on his living situation, not a thing on his childhood. I think his wounds are a lot less mystical than that. However, it is probable that before killing his father as a teenager, he searched his memories and learned the whole story. 

He would have been horrified that his mother's downfall had been the fruitless pursuit of love from this weak, mean, unworthy man. Coming from Slytherin - a house that prized merit and had embraced him, a half-blood, on intellectual and magical merit - he would have been appalled that love even drove her to want his father in the first place. He would have been equally appalled that his father had rejected his mother (probably, in his view, a great and mighty witch) for such superficially Muggle reasons as being of poor social position and not pretty.

By this point, Tom was either a sociopath, or - my theory - so self-protectively guarded with others as to be indistinguishable from one. I think learning the story of his mother would have sealed that choice, if it was a choice. The lessons he would have drawn would have been that closeness is dangerous, needing someone gives them power over you and takes your own power away, and the love of others is usually an illusion not to be trusted. We see the seeds of this mentality in his brutal reaction to Peter Pettigrew's expression of devotion (and Pettigrew probably, in fact, _was_ devoted, given his search for Voldemort and caring for him in his most helpless form) - he insists that Pettigrew had helped him only from fear. The only expression of devotion that he seems to accept without argument is Bella's, which makes sense given that her devotion is completely without regard for herself. The more ordinary love based on mutual emotional benefit would seem, through his lens, false, self-serving, and dangerous.

So there are my thoughts. I'm a bit of a maverick on these things, so I'm sure you'll find plenty to argue with. Fire away!


End file.
